


y para apoderarse de su despojo

by greywash



Series: Fun in the Sun Creative Calisthenics [6]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Children, F/M, Grief, It feels incredibly trivializing to use this tag but I also feel like I kind of have to so:, Judaism, Mommy Issues, Names, Relationship Problems, Religious alienation, See Story Notes for Warnings, marriage is hard, parenthood is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 19:02:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15055694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: Their first is a boy, and they call him Tau; then (just about the time he thinks Madi has very nearly forgiven him), there is Kabelo. Madi strong and healthy, and their two sons; and then there is a third, a girl.





	y para apoderarse de su despojo

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy. Okay, so first, shame-faced apologies; this was supposed to go up yesterday, and I don't have a make-up story for today, either, I'm really pretty sick. 
> 
> [**@greenfionn**](http://greenfionn.tumblr.com) asked for "Prompt: Black Sails, god/s"; and thereby inadvertently stumbled into one of my pet intersections of historical topics, namely: the Golden Age of Piracy and the Spanish crypto-Jews. This is why this took me one million years, and @greenfionn, I apologize if this is not at all what you bargained for.
> 
> I would like to say I learned my lesson, on this story, about writing about topics I really, really care about when I'm trying to write to a deadline, but that would be a lie. A truly humiliating **5:33:07** spent writing and editing this story; at a certain point, I feel like you just kind of have to lean in.
> 
>  **Warnings for disturbing content**. My full warning policy is [in my profile](http://www.ao3.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings), and you are always welcome to [email me](mailto:greywash@gmail.com) with more specific warning-related questions.

Their first is a boy, and they call him Tau; then (just about the time he thinks Madi has very nearly forgiven him), there is Kabelo. Madi strong and healthy, and their two sons; and then there is a third, a girl. 

A girl. 

They should have fought. A girl, born outside Newport within breath of black sea; and between them Madi turns her damp face up to his face and _no tenemos_ , She whispers and whispers, damp and warm damp and warm damp on warm on his face _no tenemos estos—_ and John steps back from the bed in the wavering candlelight.

"I can't," he says. "I can't. I can't."

So Madi in his silence calls her Eleanor. Another blow. 

Seven months later he sails as quartermaster aboard the _Ruth_ out of Bristol: what a name. A privateer, but it's all much the same: John kills a man in close quarters taking the _Dauphin_. His sword slips from his hand in the tangle of bodies on the deck, so he uses his knife. He can't get away, can he, from the beasts of the sea. But it doesn't matter, much; winter makes him whimsical. When he comes back to the slumping house outside Newport, Madi's daughter is walking: not just pulling herself up onto unsteady feet by the corner of a bench, as he well recalls from the boys, but walking, truly: shrieking laughter as she runs after her brothers, calling out wordlessly: _Aa—Taa—Baa—_ , arms outstretched, as she lumbers after them across the pebbled beach. 

They should have fought. The winter was hard. Madi has taken in sewing. She hates it, her hands made for bigger work; she is silent with him, again.

That night in their bed he dreams of Elisabet. Elisabet as Elisabet, his Isobel, his little Isabelle: _No los tenemos_ , She had whispered to them in the candlelight, her dark curling hair still damp with the sea. _Had_ She said so? It sounds—false. Unnatural. _No los tenemos_? _Somos llamados_? _No somos_ — ? In any case there is no reasoning with dreams; Her low voice whispering like that to Her children: _We have lost those names_. Here is what is real: _Jorge, the baby_ , She says exhausted to him in the fever in Maurepas: and that, _that_ is a memory, he dreams. _No, Mama, Jacques_ , he reminds Her, wiping water over Isabelle's red sticky forehead and palms so that she will let Her sleep when, crackling and airless, the child tries and tries to scream. John jerks awake clammy and shaking and Madi is watching him in the moonlight: "Nothing," he croaks, "nothing, it's nothing"; and she lays her rough hand on his cheek.

There won't be another baby. They agree on that. They spend another hard year in the little slumping house outside Newport, then into Bristol, where Madi takes work spinning for a widowed weaver who knew John as Jacob in Philadelphia, and still wraps his name at the beginning like a strand of her wool. John tries for work at the yards, in the smithy, even in the counting-house; comes back and tries even for spinning but "Yohn," Rachel Isaiah says, low and soft, "Stop, Stop"; and, heart pounding, John pushes the wheel away. "You won't keep them all by both spinning," she tells him, very low. "Even if you could fit your hands to the work."

"I know," he says, helpless. "I know." 

Tau is is seven and growing nearly faster than they can keep him covered; Kabelo is five and already reads. Madi's daughter is two, almost three. Her crown of hair is thick and kinky, inky-dark; she has darker skin but Her freckles, still; and she has Her crooked mouth; Her brown, brown bottomless eyes. _This is also for the good_ , Rachel Isaiah had said to Jacob, when they had buried Her in Philadelphia; but it had meant nothing. It hadn't comforted Her after Isabelle in the fever in Fort Maurepas; it hadn't quieted Her when they'd lost María on the boat between Hispanola and Vera Cruz; and true to Her blood in him it had been no comfort to him that spring, and no comfort to him in the summer, and no comfort to him when the leaves started to fall; and when he had buried Anna alone in Pavonia two Decembers later he had been thinking: _And what of this? And what of_ this _?_ , blind with rage and rain. _No los tenemos_ , She had whispered into their hair between Vera Cruz and Fort Maurepas. Had she? _No los tenemos_ , _no los tenemos_ : Jacob who was Jacques who was Jorge who was Juan who was Jan who was—who had been—who was—who had been—; and his mother's voice low like Rachel Isaiah's damp against his wet face: _no nos llames así_ , _no los tenemos_. They have taken our names.

At the end of the summer they leave Rachel Isaiah's house in Bristol, and return to the drooping house outside Newport, above its dreary pebbled beach. A fight; it was nothing. "It was nothing, it was _nothing_ ," says John; gasping as Madi hits him: batters her fists against his face, his shoulders; she doesn't weep. It was nothing. Rachel Isaiah's soft voice, that sound he'd know anywhere: that mulchy _ch_ , with her face bent beside Madi's daughter, with her little, serious half-frown: "I have to go," he is saying to Madi, throat tight, "I have to, I _have_ to"; and she moans, "Not this, not this, _not this_ "; but he has to go, and she knows it, so he takes her blunt fists on his body with his head bowed unmoving until she releases him, and then he goes. Fighting feels right, very nearly; he sails on the _Phoenix_ , out of London; he can't get anything else. 

He's back in April with his pay. They've left their lodgings—been turned out—are missing; he doesn't know, he _can't_ know, so he sleeps alone on dry land for the first time in a decade and in his dreams he keeps his forehead pressed to the wall eyes shut while behind him Anna lights candles they can't afford: _Blessed are You_ , in Spanish (in Dutch?) (it wasn't French) with her little voice quavering (had it quavered?): _our Lord, blessed are You our Lord, blessed are You our Lord_ ; because he had never learned the rest. 

He doesn't know the rest.

At St. Augustine, in the upside-down undoing of the dead of English winter, he had bought oranges in buckets and pressed them around to all the men. Had they been hungry or ill or too cold to breathe, next to their mother in their ocean-salty lodgings? Had they had to open their hands in the street? Through a window John had thought he'd seen a bulto of Santa Esterica, a girl as lovely as Her with Her dark cascade of hair curling against Her freckled cheek; and part of him, a mad hot part of him, had wanted to feast! To shout! The festival of Santa Esterica and he bought oranges for his men and then sat in his berth in silence for the rest of his half a year shuttling tobacco, not daring to pray that his life back in England would not be taken away. John has always known himself for a coward; but in this he'd not be his Mother's son: he'd be a coward ten times over, if it meant that they'd survive. 

In Bristol on the eighth day home from the _Phoenix_ (ill-named), Long John Silver meets Monfort again; and four hours later he's quartermastering again, for the _Pelican_. He writes a note to Rachel Isaiah, and sends it along with his pay. He doesn't know anyone else who might know where they'd go. When he follows her letter back to Newport, not hoping, a year later, it is Isabelle who answers the door.

"Eleanor," corrects John, after a minute; and she blinks Her brown eyes without recognition at his aching, alien face.

Madi isn't particularly pleased to see him. Not particularly displeased, either, John thinks; she seems mostly resigned. His pay aboard the _Pelican_ was good. Not enough on its own, perhaps; but Madi, never more than a competent spinster, is learning glasswork from Benjamin de Costa. Whatever laws they have for their women, they won't bother to try them on her: John could go to sea and never come home again: her children still wouldn't starve. It makes it easier to come inside the house. At twilight they are silent together, at the top of the dreary pebbled beach. Tau and Kabelo are chasing each other in and out of the first few inches of water. The boys of Bristol, Madi says, have taken to calling them "Tom" and "Bill." It makes John angry: a hot, useless sort of rage; the boys, Madi tells him, love it. They want her to call them "Tom" and "Bill" at home. 

"Don't," John says, rough; and Madi takes a slow, unsteady breath. "Don't," he repeats, softer. "Please."

"I don't," she says; and then, very low, "I can't."

He wants to reach out for her hand. The boys play on, shrieking. On the beach Madi's daughter is gathering up shells in her skirt. 

"I thought of her," John says, "on—St. Augustine." His leg aches, today. "I thought of—of them. And of you." His chest aches. He says, "She should have—"; and then stops. His throat closed. Empty. Locked up. _I wish we'd fought_ , he wants to say; but Madi can always tell when he lies.

"If you're to stay, I won't let her see how you feel about her," Madi says. Her hands folded up in her lap. "She's old enough to understand it now, you know."

John watches her: her freckles, her round cheeks. _Is she_. Her black curls are coming out from under her cap. She has a little, serious half-frown. _Is she?_

"She reminds me of my sisters," John says, finally.

Madi is quiet. In the ticklish roll and little dance of the water, Tom splashes, and Bill shrieks.

"I was thinking of them in St. Augustine," John says. "Of you, and of them—it was—I thought of you all the time, more times than I can count, but in St. Augustine I kept—I couldn't—it was—an important day." 

"An important day," Madi echoes.

 _An important day_. Useless. He rubs at his face. 

"It was—my mother called it the Festival of Santa Esterica, that's—Saint Esther, in the end, but that's—I know, I _know_ that's not right." He sighs, and rubs at his face. "She said that—that we lived, so that meant it was. It was a thing that they couldn't take." Looking out over the water. His children, and the pebbles, and the grey water beyond them. The vast sea. Helpless, he says, "And then—she died."

The words—leave him. _And then, She died_. It feels like a vast, ungainly sea-bird, taking flight from the center of his chest. It leaves him unsteady. Hollowed out.

"She's not the only one," says Madi, voice low, and very tight.

"I know," he says, quiet. "But I—Madi. _I don't remember_. I never learned. She—" He spreads his hands, helpless. "You know, she was—a convert, of a sort. Catholic, at her face. But she—taught things, to my sisters. That was—how it was done. In secret. The women, and the girls. But they—are gone, and I—I don't know anything." 

There is a shout. Tau is pulling Kabelo up out of the water, wet to the shoulders of his shirt. "Tom" and "Bill." Christ. 

"I haven't got," John says, very quietly, "anything to give."

Madi says nothing. But of course she wouldn't, would she? John's hardly the only one with _that_ particular knife in his side. 

"Call them Tau and Kabelo," John says. "Please. I should've—"

He stops. Looking at Madi's daughter, an ache in his chest. Her little, serious frown as she inspects the shells in her apron. The dark curling corona of her hair. All his dark-haired serious-faced women: his sister Hanna who was Ana who was Alma who was Amelie who was Hannah again and buried as Anna in Pavonia; little Isabelle, dead of a fever, who had been Isobel who had been his pet his love his Elisabet, when he was barely bigger, back in Amsterdam. Miriam-María, whom they had barely known; and of all of them, his Mother: Reina Franco and Silvia de Guzmán and Estrella Silvia y Franco and Sylvie François: a half-dozen different women come to rest at last beneath a single stone reading "Esther Frank," in Philadelphia: She who had twenty years earlier given John Silver a name, at his birth in Las Palmas, that he would never know to claim.

"I should've asked you to call her Esther," John says, to Madi, on the beach. "I should've given her that, at least."

Madi doesn't answer for a long, long time. Sitting with her warm beside him, John watches their children; and beyond them, the grey mirror of the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> GOSH. Okay. All these stories appear to have a note that begins, "so I spent an embarrassingly long time obsessing about...," and for this one it's, "so I spent an embarrassingly long time obsessing about Biblical translations that were extant in the 17th and 18th century Spanish Americas, FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE of getting the wording of the title right." Though that makes it sound like it's the only thing I was obsessing about, which is what we call "a lie." Anyway, in the end I settled on using [La Biblia Reina-Valera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reina-Valera); specifically that translation of the Book of Esther (in the Jewish tradition, the Megillah) 3:13: "[Y fueron enviadas letras por mano de los correos á todas las provincias del rey, para destruir, y matar, y exterminar á todos los Judíos, desde el niño hasta el viejo, niños y mujeres en un día, en el trece del mes duodécimo, que es el mes de Adar, **y para apoderarse de su despojo**](https://www.biblestudytools.com/rvr/ester/3-13.html)," which is rendered in the New King James as "And the letters were sent by couriers into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, **and to plunder their possessions**." The incidental piraticality of the NKJV word choice aside, here, the sense of this particular translation of this passage seemed appropriate for this story. (FWIW, it's "plunder" in the NIV too.) 
> 
> [The Festival of Santa Esterica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Santa_Esterica) was/is a real thing, specifically an adaptation of [Purim](https://www.chabad.org/holidays/purim/default_cdo/jewish/Purim.htm) to a form that could be more safely practiced in the Spanish Empire during the Inquisition (which lasted until 1834, FWIW).
> 
>  **Full disclosure/apologies** : I'm of (mixed) Jewish descent but my family is non-practicing, and I'm always worried, when writing about the Jewish diaspora and _especially_ about Jewish religious practice, about getting it right. Certain elements of this story (basically everything having to do with immigration, reinvention, renaming, and the profound sense of loss that comes along with all those things) are drawn from my own family history, but this story complicates things by involving both _conversos_ and practicing Jews, as well as the non-practicing children of _conversos_ and Jews, and putting them not only in the Spanish New World but also in areas where Jews were able to live openly and participate more broadly in society. FWIW, I do not intend to assign universal attitudes to any of these groups, even when I'm implicitly assigning attitudes to those individuals. Also, while I'm super interested in this period in Jewish history, especially the history of the Sephardim, and I've done quite a bit of reading, it's still very far outside my experience, _especially_ the parts having directly to do with Jewish practice; I am only an egg,  &c., and I both apologize for any errors and welcome comments and corrections on any count, either via my actual comments or by [email](mailto:greywash@gmail.com). 
> 
> I'm not sure what else to link here for sources. I used [this database](http://www.sephardicgen.com/databases/SephardimCom2009.htm) and [this book](https://books.google.com/books?id=_dQP4nHgyVUC&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251) for last names and [Behind the Name](https://www.behindthename.com/) for first names; I somewhat uncertainly chose Sotho names for Madi's sons, since I couldn't remember any specific reference to where in Africa her family was from, and Google Translate tells me "Madi" actually is a word in Sotho (meaning "money"). I used [Chabad.org](https://www.chabad.org/) heavily for Jewish reference. I do remember my (practicing) Jewish relatives telling my (nonpracticing) mom ["this is also for the good"](https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1582773/jewish/The-Jewish-Blessing-on-Death.htm), or something very like it, after the death of her mother, but I had to look it up to check the exact wording, since I was like six at the time.


End file.
